My favorite artist turned nine this week. Here are some drawings of me he’s made over the years:
Downtown Austin recommendations
People always ask me for recommendations when they visit my city, so in today’s newsletter I put a few walkable downtown-centric recommendations for folks who might be coming in for SXSW. (In short: use the hike and bike trail and get tacos at Veracruz.)
6. Walk the hike and bike a mile west from the convention center and you’ll arrive at our civic cathedral, The Austin Public Library. Take in the view on the roof and check out the Recycled Reads gift shop downstairs for souvenirs. If you’re tired, you can get queso and chips at Torchy’s, a smoothie at the JuiceLand, or a picnic at the Trader Joe’s nearby. If you have a bit more energy, you can either walk south on the pedestrian bridge across the river and hit Terry Black’s BBQ, or you can head north on what I call the Shoal Creek Book Walk and get to the corner of 6th and Lamar, where you can shop at the flagship Whole Foods, buy my books signed at Bookpeople, and possibly catch a free day show at Waterloo Records.
7. Another nice walk from the convention center is north along the Waller Creek Greenbelt and up to the brand-new Waterloo Greenway. Go a bit further north and you can hit Scholz Garden, where our best radio station, KUTX 98.9, is throwing a series of morning shows open to the public. A few blocks north of that and you can take in the Blanton Museum’s wonderful show of Anni Albers’ thread and paper work. A few blocks west is The Harry Ransom Center, the gem of The University of Texas. If you aren’t dead of heatstroke by then, you can walk back downtown through the Texas Capitol grounds (take a selfie with The Ten Commandments!) and down Congress Avenue.
8. Radio: We have great stations here. In addition to KUTX 98.9 FM, there’s classical KMFA 89.5 FM and our community KOOP 91.7 FM. I’d add those as favorites to the Radio Garden app before I came down.
I’m a middle-aged dad who doesn’t get out much, so take my recommendations with a grain of margarita salt.
One thing worth mentioning: A bicycle opens up the city in amazing ways for people visiting downtown. There’s a bike lane that runs from west 3rd to the Convention center, under 35, and east on 5th street that can link you up to a bunch of stuff.
Read the rest of today’s newsletter here.
Sam Anderson on writing and drawing
For the fourth year in a row, the writer Sam Anderson and I got together to celebrate Michel de Montaigne’s birthday and talk about our work, our lives, and our love for writing and drawing:
SAM: The thing that unites good writing and good drawing — authentic writing and authentic drawing — is the exploratory line. I can tell when a drawing is the real thing for me because it contains surprise in it and it’s looking for something and you can see that happening in the work. And it’s so magical and ineffable… And the same with writing: it has to have that in it. And you know, I am like a super perfectionistic craftsman about my writing, but in a way that I think, at its best, reinforces that original sort of wandering, exploratory quality.
You can read the show notes and watch the whole conversation in the newsletter, or there’s a way to listen in your favorite podcast app!
Joy in repetition
Today’s newsletter is about finding joy in repetition and the generative power of doing the same thing over and over again. You can read it here.
I tried writing this letter a few weeks ago and couldn’t get anywhere with it. And then I remembered this image of stacked drawings by Kate Bingaman-Burt and everything sort of clicked into place:
When I usually think about an artist’s body of work, I visualize piles of sketchbooks stacked up or diaries taking up a shelf:
The thing I love about Kate’s image is that by layering up all these images a black hole appears that seems to be eating up the drawings. It feels spiritual to me, somehow, like a void or a womb from which something springs forth.
I find this often happens when I’m writing the newsletter — if I can find a good image to put at the top, everything else just sort of flows out. I’ve been asking myself why I don’t write books this way, starting with the illustrations I want to go into them, then writing to the images. At least for first drafts…
Making things with your own hands
Two Fridays ago my friend Steven visited the studio and I showed him how to make zines from a single sheet of paper. We spent a half hour or so catching up and folding, creasing, and tearing paper. At the end I said, “I haven’t made anything with my hands in a while… that’s probably why I’m sad!” (I wrote more about it and linked to a bunch of zines in the newsletter.)
I found myself stuck at a band function with my kiddo for several hours and never was I more happy to carry a pen and a notebook. I think I filled a dozen pages or so of scribbles and drawings.
I’ve been using my notebook a lot lately, not as much as a place to keep things I’ll need later (that’s what I use Apple Notes for these days) as much as a place to doodle and draw and write and work things out.
Inspired by reading Marc Masters’ High Bias: A Distorted History of the Cassette Tape, I’ve been buying sealed, pre-recorded cassettes for cheap at the record store, taping over the protection tabs, taping over the music (using the runtime as a constraint for the mix), then taping over the artwork. January’s mix featured a lot of music that isn’t streaming, but for February’s mix, I was able to duplicate the playlist on Spotify: “Music in the Key of Love.”
As the late David Carr put it, there’s just something about making things “with your own dirty little hands…”
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